If there is one thing that Amazon’s founder and CEO Jeff Bezos is famous for, it’s his relentless commitment on long-term growth. Having ignored critics for years, Bezos’ willingness to sacrifice short-term profits for long-term success appears to be bearing fruit.

Not only has Amazon cemented its position as the no.1 online retailer in countless markets, it has also built an industry-leading cloud computing business and established itself as a serious contender in the growing media streaming landscape.

The company has achieved all that by constantly re-investing most of its profits. In the past twelve months, Amazon made a net profit of $596 million. In 2004, it made $588 million. The difference being: in 2015, Amazon generated $107 billion in revenue, which is more than 15 times the amount it had made in 2004.

If Amazon had neither financial profits nor stock appreciation, the investors would have dumped Bezos years ago.

Investors have been very well rewarded in stock appreciation. They don’t give a rip about all the happy talk about the virtuous long term and the evil short term. They want profit or stock appreciation. With Amazon they get the stock appreciation.

Nobody is sacrificing anything for the long term. Look at the stock chart. That’s not a profile in sacrifice.

When a firm has both cash and investment opportunities, and thinks those opportunities can beat the average market return, it’s reasonable to invest in those opportunities.

When it has the cash, but does not see the profitable opportunities, it’s reasonable to pay the cash to stockholders.

Sometimes they distribute the cash via dividend. Other times they do a stock buyback. Both result in cash flowing to stockholders.

The bean counters and analysts all understand this very well. They know what Amazon is doing, and they understood the similar Microsoft and Apple strategies over the years. They are always looking at how the options might be employed.